We had a personal guided tour of the National Trust House and spent three hours there. The caretaker was great and knew a lot of the history of the district and was happy to share it all with us. We arrived around 12.30 and left at 3.45pm – so lots of talking.
The house is set on a high bank overlooking the Murray River. We have been informed, that this was the first Murray River in Australia and the other named later….
They had an orchard down on the river flats. You can see fruit trees which have been growing since the mid 1800’s.
The home was built by the McLarty family who had a big stake in this area and rose from tenant farmers to do pretty well in the district. They had a liquor licence and operated a hotel from behind the house and then built the Premier Hotel – still standing in Pinjarra – and transferred the liquor licence to there. This was done when the train line came through, so it was a profitable business. Old Blythewood is just across the river from where we are camped and at Pinjarra homestead, they made brandy which they sold to the McLarty family.
Above is a knife cleaner. Above is a jarrah bed, the first they made before they became of means and could afford to have master build furniture.
This is a green rose…. it it called a China Green Rose and those are the green flowers. The McLarty sisters were keen gardeners and planted many unusual varieties of plants.
Another plant new to me, English Mulberry also known as the Black Mulberry. It is a lovely tree shape and the big bonus is that the fruit are not on long stems but short stems, much easier picking and dealing with.
It doesn’t have the weeping effect of our common mulberry. This is on my shopping list as it can be grown in a container.
The caretaker also told us of the Pinjarra Battle, whereby two warring aboriginal groups were causing havoc around the colony.
Stirling led his force after the party. Arriving at their camp, five members of the pursuit party were sent into the camp to arrest the suspects and the Aborigines resisted. In the ensuing "battle", Stirling reported 15 killed (eleven names were collected later from Aboriginal sources); police superintendent T.T. Ellis later died of wounds and a soldier was wounded. Stirling warned the tribe against payback killings and arranged a peace between the warring tribes, but Calyute continued to break it in raiding the Whadjuk until his demise.
You will hear this described as a massacre and the numbers exaggerated, but I checked the story on Wikipedia, and it was as the caretaker described as being correct.
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